Guantanamo

The Inquirer Editorial Board has done some thinking about Guantanamo Bay, and it isn't pretty:

If an American soldier is captured on some distant battlefield, he could be denied prisoner-of-war status, and subjected to grueling, abusive interrogation amid inhumane living conditions.

And what explanation might his cruel captors offer? Hey, after 9/11, everything changed.

That grim future certainly is not what the Bush administration seeks as it continues to bungle its detention of hundreds of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

What planet does the Inquirier live on?

This "grim future" has been with us for some time. Our soldiers aren't "prisoners of war" when they are captured now: they are paraded before cameras before they are shot or beheaded.

We haven't fought an enemy that paid attention to the Geneva Convention since 1945.

The question is whether the US will unilaterally uphold the convention with the people we have now.

Cleary, in most of the particulars, we should (and do).

But the people at Guantanmo aren't going anywhere, because the war is NOT "over." The Taliban and Al Qaeda never surrendered; they have just moved the fight on to new venues.

Want proof?

Whenever we free these terrorists, we have to fight them again.

And again.

It's no secret: they fight just like they promise to fight.

The war's over, but nobody told our enemy that.

That's an important part of losing: accepting defeat.

Leave it to the nimrods at the Inquirer not to understand the news in their own paper....

- posted by total @ 11/18/2004 06:59:00 AM .